It is desirable to be able to access and edit documents over the Internet. This is particularly useful for collaboration among different people so that everyone can have access to the document. Because documents are often written with proprietary word processing programs and because Internet users do not always have this proprietary software, it is desirable to be able to edit documents over the Internet that are formatted according to a given language, for example, with a general purpose markup language, such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML).
Often when documents are created according to a given system or language are converted to an editable format for use with another language or format, document content may be lost. For example, when documents created with a proprietary word processing system are converted to web format, for example, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or some proprietary format, content and features of the documents, such as applied styles and formatting, may be stripped out of the document. For a specific example, a document formatted according to XML that is converted to HTML for use in an Internet-based application may experience content or formatting losses. This is because the software program used during the conversion may not understand how to handle the proprietary features applied to the document by the application used for creating the document. Users are often willing to lose these features because of the advantages of web-based editing. However, the resulting edited document may not have the look and feel of the original.